"I'm not sure that I can play either. I'm not sure that I ever touched a piano!"
"Oh, you can! Something with great, heavy, rolling, smashing chords. I know that if I touch it it will disappear, and I can't possibly wait till Miss Thomasina comes home. I never could have got through Commencement if I had known it was here."
"Nor I. If I had met it, I would have followed it like the children follow the elephant, and some one else might have saluted the audience. It makes Commencement seem like three cents."
"Now, play!" commanded Eleanor. "Mother!"
Mrs. Bent came to the door. Richard saw her look at her daughter, and the glance was worth coming farther than this to see. It adored her, swept over her from head to foot, devoured her. Something of its intensity entered into Richard. Eleanor was older than he; she had stood ahead of him in school; she had scarcely spoken to him a dozen times; but she became in that moment a creature to be admired, to be cherished. Life changed for him, boyhood was left behind. He met Eleanor's eyes and saw in them youth, curiosity about himself, restlessness, a reflection, it seemed to him, of the confused emotions of his own heart. It was Eleanor's gaze which first turned away.
"The concert is going to begin, mother."
Mrs. Bent sat down in the bay window and Eleanor took a chair from which she could watch Richard's beautiful hands. Once after he had taken his place on the stool, he looked into her eager face, then he let his hands fall upon the keys. He shut his eyes to keep back starting tears. He remembered that some one had said that life held few moments to which a man would say, "Stay, thou art so fair!" The saying was not true. Here was such a moment; there would be for him, he knew, a thousand more.
A Schumann Nachtstück, a Bach Prelude, a Mozart Sonata rolled from under his fingers, which then danced into a jig, performances allowed by Thomasina. There were others, forbidden except under her own direction and in careful, studious sections. These Richard now hazarded boldly and played them not ill. A dozen compositions finished, he whirled round upon the piano stool.
"Won't you play, now?"